GOA NEEDS A STATUTORY LAW COMMISSION How much seriousness the Government of Goa accords or does not accord to law is reflected both in how it actually goes about enforcing and respecting the law and also how it goes about implementing the law or disregarding it or changing it when it suits it.
But it is the heights of things when it sets up a law commission itself with only the legal backing of an executive Order signed by the Law Secretary in the name of the Governor of Goa which any subsequent Government or the same Government (if the presently constituted Law Commission incurs its displeasure) can simply bypass by a sleight of another Order. Cannot a legislation better serve the purpose? Umbrage may well be taken under the fact that the Law Commission of India is also repeatedly constituted by a Government Order each time and each time its terms of reference are defined by the particular Order in question. Well, surely if Goa is special and must have special status, it must be special in how it respects the work of its constituted bodies and rigorously does not throw entire processes to the winds simply availing of the fact that the very constitution of the body was not statutory? Perhaps it can take a cue from neighbouring Bangladesh which has a statutory Law Commission? What’s more? In the web-site of the Law Commission of Goa now (http://goalawcommission.gov.in), there is an admission that this Commission has been constituted after forty years and is only the second one to be constituted post-1961. What happened to the First Law Commission? The Law Commission’s website refers to the first Law Commission of Goa as being set up in 1968. Coming as it did then, it was assigned the task of examining the Portuguese Laws in force in Goa, Daman and Diu and to repeal the same wherever necessary by undertaking suitable legislation. Finding the task cumbersome, it is believed to have abandoned the first part and changed its course by setting out to prepare a comprehensive Draft Bill for Parliamentary Legislation expressly repealing all the Portuguese laws (except those the immediate repeal of which was not considered feasible or advisable) and extending the remaining Central Acts to the extent considered necessary. It is not clear to what extent the First Law Commission’s recommendations saw the light of day then or thereafter. Clearly all their recommendations were not accepted. And no second Commission was constituted after that until now. What is the vision with which this present Law Commission is constituted? The order is simply too bland and does not indicate any such vision. In its stated objective of constituting the present Law Commission, the Government of Goa has stated that its objective is to set it up in view of the persistent demand for such a body to examine the existing legislations and to suggest suitable measures requiring changes or modifications, with a view to co-ordinating and harmonizing them. True, there has been a consistent demand for this from people. Revenue laws and mundkar, land tenancy laws and rent laws, for instance, do not reflect the spirit of the family laws. The Town and Country Planning Act has not incorporated the requisites of the 73rd and 74th Amendments or the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution. There have been calls from the roof-tops for statutory provisions for hearing people’s voices in any planning and that tribal voices be given a special hearing considering their marginalization over the years. The Ganv Ghor Rakhonn Manch for instance has in its representation to the Chief Minister been consistently calling for Immediate re-enactment / amendment, after a thorough public debate and discussion, as necessary the Town and Country Planning Act, 1974, the Municipal Act, 1968, The Corporation of City of Panaji Act, 2002 and the Goa Panchayati Raj Act, 1994, as well as other related legislation that need to be harmonized, to create this legal framework within which the Regional Plan process may move forward toward fruition, as well as for future replication. The Jury in the People’s Tribunal on Restoration of Adivasi Homelands in Goa has observed that the Government’s Regional Plan 2021 cannot be said to be legal without the conduct of gram sabha meetings and the constitution and deliberation of the Gram Sabha as visualized under the Forest Rights Act 2006 with regard to planning of community resources. Mr. Valmiki Faleiro has, through the columns of this newspaper, detailed the harrowing experience of mutation of property documents that is the practice today. The list is endless. But the moot point remains that when issues get hot, successive Governments are known to constitute one-man inquiry committees, task forces, inquiry commissions. People think their problem is redressed and then that committee either works and gives a report or doesn’t work at all and in either cases, its recommendations are not even announced as accepted or endorsed or rejected by the Government. And the whole situation continues as it was in the beginning. And in the mean time the issue has been forgotten. Hopefully this is not the same ploy at work? Can we say that in constituting a Law Commission, the Government is reflecting a responsive character and accountability? If so, does the accountability stop there? What is the accountability of the Government to the very Law Commission it has constituted? What is the accountability of the Government to the people when the Law Commission works and makes some recommendations or fails to work? What is the accountability of this Law Commission to the Government that has constituted it and to the people in response to whose demand the same was constituted? What is the process by which this Law Commission is going to operate? Is it going to be pouring through all the existing laws itself? Is it going to constitute sub-committees? Is it going to elicit people’s opinions on specific laws to start with? What effort will be made to elicit various voices, specially the voices of the marginalized sections of society? Are its members itself going to work at the process of synchronization of the various laws? How is it going to ensure transparency in its functioning? What shall be the functions of this Commission? Who shall determine them and how? What shall its powers be? Will it have the powers to requisition feedback from all the various Departments of the Government of Goa in matters connected with law reform or change? Will it have the force of a recommendatory body? Is its report or the recommendations it makes required to be tabled before the Goa Legislative Assembly? Or will it depend on an MLA asking for it? Is the Government required to say why it accepts or does not accept the recommendations? Or is that the archaic concept of “legislative privilege” in a colonial set up with no accountability? What remuneration will the Law Commission members get? This is certainly not intended to cast aspersions on the members of the constituted Commission. But if the criteria for these things are not specified at the very start, surely neither the Commission members nor the public wants to find distractions in the form of a questioning of the cost to the ex-chequer or the motives in the amount allocated? It can be seen from the web-site that the Law Commission has an office at Maquinez Palace Annexe on the Ground Floor and staff and therefore consequent expenses. But again this must all come within the frame-work of a statute? Many questions…but when will the first step of constituting the Commission as a statutory body be taken by the Government? Or else adhocism including with the very Law Commission will continue to be the order of the day. (The above article appeared in OPinionatED in the Herald edition of 1 July, 2009) -- (M) 9326137682 "We shall have to repent in this generation , not so much for the evil deeds of the wicked people, but for the appalling silence of the good people."~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
